Saturday, September 29, 2012

From the top of the
hill, fifty square miles of sage flats. Watching the shadows of passing clouds
rolling along the hillsides, over the mountains, the forests, and rivers. Fifty
square miles of nothing except for an odd ranch or oil derrick, the sagebrush
shining silver in the sunlight. To the west the Flattops are rising white
against an impossible blue sky. Nothing on the air but a slight breeze and the
rustle of aspen leaves, the gurgle of a distant creek.

~

What have I become, I wonder? Nearly everyday a flight from
town into the mountains to read among the pine and aspen, to visit the river
and to wade along the deep pools casting flies into the swirling darkness. I
walk familiar old trails and visit special places where my history is written. I
grew up in this canyon and it feels like home. In the past I always felt
rushed, always felt like I had to keep moving. Today was always just a bump in
the road before Tomorrow. Now I walk slowly as to observe this landscape with
fresh eyes, not the arrogant eyes of youth. I feel both resigned and strangely
whole, conflicted yet at peace… I feel ancient. It would be easy I think, to
spend the rest of my days hiding here on the outskirts of the living, but time
seems to have a way of healing our wounds, or at least numbing us to their pain.
Our understanding of things evolves and grows. Life continues to be a work in
progress.

Shortly before the Death Meditation, just as I was beginning
to feel my body shudder, I waded across the river one September day to a big
inviting rock in the middle of the current. I lay there naked on that warm
smooth stone, as though I might gain some energy from it. I felt so tired, and
after a while I fell asleep to the river’s soothing song, the sun’s warmth on
my skin. I spent the next six months thinking about that moment and wishing I
had never awoken from that sleep. I wished I had died there on that warm stone
because I suspect death may be easy. Now I just want to melt into this
landscape, claw my way deep into the raw earth, awake in the Spring with a
newfound hunger and thirst.

Long plumes of snow
are being blown from the summits of distant peaks, the white cutting across the
blue sky like a razor. From the Southern end of the range you can see the west face
of Longs Peak almost fifty miles distant. Further West you can see the
headwaters of the mighty Colorado River that carved the Grand Canyon and used
to run all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Everything is being worn down to the
sea little by little.

~

What are you running
from? Where do you go? What do you do? I am running from feelings, I go
search for the stuff that underlies those feelings, the stuff I can touch,
breath, smell, and taste… I eat distance and silence. As the alchemy of poisons
fades from my body, my mind clears and I begin to recognize old parts of myself
in this flesh of mine. I feel a rewarding burn in my legs from hiking the
canyon’s trails and notice the outline of muscles returning all over my body. I
always took great pride in my physical form, but now I am wary of it, having
learned its flaws and limitations. Still I think, it’s a good body for the most
part and the only one I’ve got. As the poisons fade and my hair begins to grow
again, I start to feel things I haven’t felt in a long time. The last months of
the Death Meditation were completely joyless and music, literature,
conversation with friends, all seemed unbearable. Any emotion felt had to be
stifled. I learned that hope is a double-edged sword, that to feel anything at
all was suffering - The First Noble Truth. I spent so much energy coming to
terms with my death and accepting it that I lost my will to live and had to
abandon all feelings of joy because a deep sorrow followed closely on joy’s
heels.

Six months lying on my own deathbed. Six months of yellow
hospital rooms, artificial lighting, the beeping machines, the poison, pain,
and loneliness. Now this strange business of returning to the world of the
living. Music stirs something within me, I read good books with ardor, a girl
shoots me a teasing grin and my heart skips a beat. I learn how to laugh again.
All these people, places and things blowing softly on the cool embers inside
me, coaxing life back little by little. I feel like one big fresh tender wound,
and I’m tired, taking flight when I begin to feel too much. One day I went
skiing through the woods deep in the Medicine Bows. It was Spring still and
moss hung from tree limbs in the old growth and flowers were blooming on bare
patches of grass on slopes exposed to the sun. I was amazed by the silence as
my skis glided quietly over the snow, and the moss swung gently in the light
breeze - there’s a soothing quality to silence and space. I was still very weak
then, but I continued further and further until I realized that I was really alone,
not another person around for miles.

Far up the canyon a fold
of orange rock slices a juniper-strewn hillside in half. Down low the rock fades
from orange to gray and then finally green. Here the rock cuts into the river forcing the body of water to swerve drastically as it rounds the bend. The
stone is beautiful, carved and polished fine by the flow. Here deep emerald
pools form along the cliffs. Sunlight fractures the clear water and illuminates
colorful stones and pebbles along the banks where the water is shallow, but the
light just reflects off the surface of those deep silent pools, the black water
swirling around and around, around for an eternity there in darkness.

~

I was dying. Some demented form of bacteria was eating away
at my body from the inside out and I was shitting blood uncontrollably. They
were rushing me off to somewhere in the hospital - another MRI, CT Scan, or X-Ray
or something. I remember my mother and father’s faces there above me as I lay
in the bed being wheeled down yet another identical hallway, their faces pale
and their eyes gaunt. My body was a chaotic free for all where the rogue
bacteria battled it out with the cancer cells and chemotherapy. I remember too the
young nurse who was along to care for me and even then while dying thought to
myself Why?! Why did she have to be so
damn cute… to make it worse she was kind, looking me in the eyes with a
tender smile, talking about music, what bands do I like? I averted my eyes in
shame as I shit more blood into a pan. Just let me die, little miss. Wheel me
outside and let me die alone in the sunshine.

Robert Bly wrote that his whole life had been a series of shynesses…
and now, in the wake of my Meditation on Death I find that I myself am no
longer shy. It’s funny how that goes. I shed my shyness along with my dignity
and when it was gone wondered why I should miss it. Women no longer have a
magnetic pull on me and my thoughts, I can meet them on an even plain, look
into their eyes, eyes like the deep pools of water that form around bends in
the river, and the mystery is still there - all that I will never understand
about Her remains unknowable - but I could care less about the mystery, I could
care less about the hidden treasures, or Fountains of Youth, or the Nirvanas
and enlightenments that lay beyond them… I may have become strangely
enlightened myself in a way, having found some truth in what the Buddhists
believe, that happiness can not be gained by clinging to things - to life, people,
our pasts nor hopeful futures. Peace will not be had while hanging on, instead
wholeness is found in letting go.